“The annual 5Point Film Festival trailer reminds us to reach for our highest ideals and live our best adventure. This year is no different.

In 2007, Julie Kennedy founded the 5Point Film Festival. In 2012, her husband Michael Kennedy, one of America’s most legendary alpinists wrote an open ‘Letter to My [his] Son’ that was published in The Alpinist Magazine. They were poignant and heartfelt words from a father to his son discussing life, passion and direction. After losing their son this year, it seemed like an appropriate homage to revisit and repurpose these words for the larger community. The letter reminds us to live our own individual adventures, passions, lives and to always try our best to reach for the highest ideals and embody the 5points: purpose, respect, commitment, humility, balance.”

Excerpts from “Letter To My Son” by Michael Kennedy

“How can I express all the thoughts and emotions that swirl in my head, Hayden, when you are halfway around the world on a big route? I remember my own days up high, the feeling of lightness as the earth drops away, the moments of pure grace when nothing matters except the next move—setting a foot just so, feeling the solid thunk of an axe, the calmness of my heart and mind. Everything I needed was right before me.

I know that’s what you’re searching for, but it’s not always what you get. For I also recall the deafening fatigue of climbing too many hours without stopping, the dry throat and the aching belly, the paralyzing fear of a long runout. The bad anchors. The close calls with storms, rockfall and avalanches. The anxiety of being days away from safety, wondering whether the next pitch will go, searching for a bivy site or just a place to sit for a few hours, knowing that the only way out is over the summit and down an unfamiliar ridge.

Meta

An Important Emerging Creative Short Film Genre.

"...underneath the young gray dawn,
a multitude of dense, white fleecy clouds,
were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains,
shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind." From "Prometheus Unbound" by Percy Bysshe Shelley